In general, a camcorder is not provided with a microphone. Hence, a photographer with a camcorder gives directions to an actor in his natural voice or by means of a separate microphone. In this case, considerable difficulties are caused for the photographer to communicate his directions to the actors at distant or crowded places. In order to resolve such difficulties, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 699,187 ('187), now abandoned, discloses a camcorder for assisting the photographer to communicate directions to the actors.
U.S. patent application ('187) discloses a camcorder body 41 with a space 41a for receiving a microphone 54, as shown in FIGS. 1 and 2. The microphone may be pulled out from the space. Namely, the microphone 54 is redoubtably supported by a connecting tube 48, which in turn is supported by means of an opening 50 provided in one end portion thereof to rotatably receive a shaft 45 formed on a projecting surface of a slider 43, as shown in FIG. 3.
On the shaft 45 are sequentially mounted a circular plate spring 46 with stopping projections 47, the connecting tube 48 with a stopping cut 47, and a cover 51 connected by means of a bolt. Thus the microphone 54 may be horizontally and vertically rotated on the slider 43.
The slider 43 is slidably mounted on a guide rail 42 attached to the camcorder body 41. The projection surface 44 of the slider 43 includes a switch SW for turning the voltage source of the microphone on and off according to the closing and opening motion of the microphone 54. Thus the photographer redoubtably pulls out the microphone from the inside of the camcorder body 41 when speaking the directions to the actors. Of course, the microphone may be moved to a proper position by means of the slider 43. The switch is automatically turned on or off according to the opening and closing motion of the microphone.
However, this camcorder not only has the inconvenience of having to manually pull the microphone from the camcorder body and fix it in a given position, but the microphone is not properly mounted on small camcorder of 8 mm or VHS-C type.